Competition and Co-operation in the Corrugated Paper

This paper describes how the five Swedish corrugated box manufacturers, while still in fierce competition, got together in 1999 to fight a new logistic system, plastic crates, which threatened to overtake a substantial part of the Swedish market for transport packaging. It explains the background of SWIF 2000, the competitive response by the five Swedish corrugated box manufacturers, how the strategy was developed, and what made the competitors work together. Many driving forces influence competition. A common tool for structuring competitive forces is Porter’s (1980) five-forces which in this paper is applied to the corrugated industry. Although Porter’s analysis of competition is a good starting point for analysing the problems for the corrugated industry in Sweden, other tools and models are needed to fully comprehend the situation. Theories from two areas are used to understand the case: 1) Strategic Alliances, 2) Hypercompetition. (Less)